Link
My parents bought this house in the early sixties for about $25k and put an addition on and an aboveground pool ( now gone) in. My mom sold it, I am presuming to this owner, in late 1979, for around $90K.
It was the most awesomest neighborhood to grow up in.
I’ve always hoped my childhood home would be put up for sale at a time I’m able to buy it. So far, either I haven’t been in the market for a home, or haven’t been in the market for a home in that city. It’s been for sale twice.
Two of the three childhood homes I can even remember are still standing. The one I relate to most and best was torn down not too long ago – maybe 35 years ago.
The first one (still standing) I only lived in for less than two years before moving to the one that’s been torn down, to start grade school. That first one was sold when we moved out of it and I can’t even remember the floor plan. All I really remember about it is that I got my first (only) bike there, built my first snowman there, got stung by a nest of wasps there, and had my first pet snake there.
The latest of the three was sold after my mother (now passed on) had to move to an assisted living place. I remember it mostly for my high school years, so it really isn’t quite a “childhood” home.
On a happier note, the house my daughter (middle child) was brought home to from the hospital, which belonged to her grandparents until their deaths in the 90’s, now belongs to her and her family. On a less happy note, she and her husband are entertaining thoughts of selling it.
It may come to the point that all you’ll have to support those memories will be photos and movies and videotapes. I tried to capture the essence of that torn-down place on 8mm movies when we visited it not too long before it was torn down, but it had been remodeled to serve as a nursery school annex to the church up the street. Pathetic. Nothing looked remotely the same and whatever memories I had of the place were better than it looked in reality.
My sympathies to you, Shirley Ujest.
I had 8 childhood homes. 4 of them are in other countries. Huh.
I am completely ok with the selling of it.
Even if I had that kind of money, I wouldn’t want to live there (too citified for my tastes. ) and all the kids that I knew are grown up with their own families.
I’d love to do a walk thru of it.
Your link was running off of the page and messing with the the table presentation on many browsers, Shirley, so I put it behind the “Link” now in your post.
My mother-in-law found out that the house her dad built for the family was up for sale a couple of years ago. So, she and her mom went up there one Saturday and knocked on the door! They explained the family connection, and the homeowners were more than happy to let them walk through it.
I’m sure you could arrange a showing, or find out when an open house is scheduled and go see it again.
My in-laws still live in the house my husband grew up in. He loves that.
One day my husband went over to our neighbors house to find the wife bawling her eyes out on the front porch. Fearing he had walked in on some kind of domestic stickiness, yet not stopping himself from talking to the husband, he found out that the wife was absolutely decimated by the fact that her parents were selling the only home she’d ever known and downsizing to a condo.
My husband freaked when I showed him the listing - he spent his teen years in that general area. He went to Groves High School. He said your house looks sorta like the one he lived in.
My childhood home was a little row house in Baltimore County. My folks bought it in 1956 for right around $10K. They sold it in '79 for low $40s. I think houses there go for over $100K now. For around 1000 sq ft of living space, attached to another house, fighting for very limited street parking. No way I’d have bought my childhood home. Nope.
This past summer, I was the one to sell the house I grew up in. Mom & Dad bought it in 1961 for $13,000. After my dad died in 1992, my mom lived there another 9 years until she decided to make her winters in AZ permanent. The Bus Kid convinced me to move across town and buy the place, so we moved there in '01.
This fall, when the Kid left for college, I posted this about it. Although I’m the one that grew up in the house, I didn’t have the same connection to it as she did.
Just last week, her and I were talking and I asked if she finally felt “at home” in this new house. She told me that the old house will always be “home” to her. From her first memories, she can always remember being able to go there and see Grandpa and then later Grandma, then finally it being our place. She’s a lot sadder about it not being in the family anymore than I am, but she accepts it now and is ok.
The new owners have virtually re-built the place inside, but Bus Kid has no interest on visiting to see. She’d like to remember it the way it was.
ShirleyUjest, what a charming house! Your mom sold is for 90K and now it’s over 450K? Wow.
Most of the houses I lived in as a child are gone – my favorite was burned down for practice for the volunteer fire department.
The house my kids grew up in, in Seattle, is now a home day care center. I’d love to do a walk-through, and if I ever get back there again, I’m going to try. All they can do is say no.
The house I’m in now – one of Woolstock’s old-timers was born here, 80+ years ago. I saw him walking by when we first moved in, and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind coming in and looking around.
I knew it had been remodeled and I was curious about the original layout. He was glad to oblige. Turns out the closet off the dining room was once a bathroom, and the kitchen pantry was once the stairway to the second floor.
When his mom got old, he said she used the dining room as a bedroom and closed off the upstairs. The now enclosed front porch used to be open, and the front door was in the middle of the (now) living room wall. There was a sleeping/sun porch on the 2nd floor. It’s been closed in, and it’s the only change I wish hadn’t happened – I love 2nd floor sun rooms.
The house is one of those build-it-yourself prairie four-squares. I’ve been in a few of them, and it’s interesting, the different interior arrangements.
Cool!
Where at, if I may ask?
My mom still lives in my childhood home. I occasionally entertain thoughts of moving back when she passes away and living there. Then I remember that it’s Altoona.
The people who bought my childhood home were nice enought to let me tour it years later.
They sold it to the daughter of one of my Sister’s friends/coworkers.
She got married and her husband had a house that they moved into.
A neighbor bought it for HIS daughter. This neighbor was a nighbor when I was left the house (1985); actually he was a nieghbor in the 70s.
Brian
My parents now live in the house my dad & aunt grew up in. My parents still own the house I grew up in (from age 5 until 26) and rent it out. My brother & I will inherit both properties at some point in the future.
Only my parents’ first house when they got married is no longer in the family- they had to sell it to get their “kid” house!
My dad’s mantra is “never sell real estate” unless you absolutely have to. We are hoping to follow in his footsteps. We had to sell our first to get into our second, but we may not have to do it again if we decide to move. We’ll see…
Near 13 Mile and Southfield - he said his road was Dunblaine. His folks sold the place in the late 70s and moved to Florida.
One of my childhood homes (we lived in many places, my dad’s a minister) was up for sale about 2 years ago. It first went on the market about a month after my Mom passed away, at $129,900. The price soon dropped to $119,900, then it bounced from listing to listing (about 4 different realtors); the last I saw it on the market was about a year or so later, listed at $104K. I guess someone must have finally purchased it.
I would have loved to have been able to buy it, but it was in NW Michigan and I live & work in the DC area - that would have been an impossible commute, to being with! LOL I also kept hoping that they’d have one of those 360 virtual tours of it, but they never did. I would have loved to see what it looked like inside, although the last time I was there, I was going on 10, and that was … over 40 years ago now!
I have pictures of the house and memories of course; I even have pictures on my computers, both home and work, that I use as wallpaper - one from 1987 (at home) and a picture from the 2003 realtor’s listing (at work). What I’d -really- love, in my wildest dreams, is to be able to retire to that house. Now if only I could do something about all that snow they get in winter up there…!
Reminds me of the aggravating fact that my grandparents house, where I spent a good portion of my childhood was sold and a fashion store got installed on it; the store is called in big black bold letters “Tits”… tres chic, huh? :dubious:
I know exactly where that street is. The world gets smaller and smaller.
I’ve lived between 12 and 13 mile off of Woodward (behind Shrine) and off of 13 Mile between Crooks and Normandy. I went to Shrine. 12 years. Don’t hold it against me.
I’m living in the house I grew up in. We bought it from my parents in 1979. They had originally bought it in 1955. For various reasons, I no longer share a bedroom with my husband, so I’m back in the bedroom I slept in when I was 18 months old. Pathetic, huh?